Ditch the Pitch!
If I could wave a magic wand and eliminate any word or phrase from the sales world it would be the word “pitch”.
Although one definition in Webster’s dictionary is “to present or advertise especially in a high pressure way”, I have always felt that a pitch is an action that is executed in baseball or when you toss or throw something and I don’t believe that it has a house in the world of professional selling.
To me a pitch is an action that is well-rehearsed, practiced over and over again, and delivered with precision. In sales, this means delivering a canned presentation that does small to address a customer’s situation. A pitch seldom looks at the issue from the prospect’s perspective; as a replacement for it often focuses on highlighting the credentials of the selling company.
I have been on the getting end of many sales pitches and most of them missed the mark. They focused on the selling companies agenda and did small to compel me to make a buying choice. Allow me to share an example or two…
When I worked in the corporate world, I agreed to meet with a sales person primarily because of his persistence; he worked for an organization and sold sales training. Upon arrival at my office he proceeded to discuss the merits of his “Questioning Skills” training program. He told me how much our companies sales would increase when we implemented this program. He told me about his company. He talked about his boss. He showed me the book that the owner of the company had written.
Finally, after 15-20 minutes, I questioned him how his program was relevant to our specific sales environment at which point he told it was not appropriate. This meant that he had just wasted his time and mine. The fact that he failed to question me any questions during our conversation was not lost on me. I still remember thinking, “How can he lecture my team the substance of asking questions when he doesn’t do it himself?”
In another situation, a salesperson fired up his laptop and proceeded to spend ten minutes talking about his company, how long they had been in business, the awards they had won, the companies they had worked with, and the projects they had completed. He was oblivious to the fact that he didn’t know whatever business about my business, concerns, current projects and buying motives. Did he seriously reckon that spewing information about his company would compel me to spend tens of thousands of dollars on his service?
There is a lot more to professional selling than showing up and throwing which seems to be the way most people try to flog their product or service. This approach is used by the vast majority of people who cold call my office. Most of the calls I get are from people who haven’t done one iota of research before they picked up the telephone and dialed my number. And I’m not talking about telemarketers here.
I know many people will disagree with me and argue that the word pitch is appropriate, especially in the world of publicity. That’s your prerogative.
You can achieve much better results by ditching the pitch and concentrating on having a two-way, meaningful conversation with your prospect and customer. Yes, you will need to discuss your offering. But, wait until you have fully explored the other person’s situation, buying motives (personal and business), choice making process, biased issues, and internal roadblocks and you will be able to present your offering in terms that makes sense to each prospect.
Ditch your pitch, adapt your approach and increase your results!